The Oregon Education Association gave Kitzhaber more than a million bucks, and now he’s giving it pay cuts and pink slips.

Someday soon, Gov. John Kitzhaber will sit across a
conference table from Richard Sanders, the little-known man behind the
biggest bankroll in Oregon politics.

Together, the two will shape Oregon’s fiscal future for years to come.

Sanders, 62, an
erudite, high-energy union leader, is new to Oregon. Bearded and
bookish, he arrived from Massachusetts two months ago to run the Oregon
Education Association, the statewide teachers union.

He takes OEA’s helm at a time when public employees are under heavy fire nationally.

Kitzhaber, 64, a
Democrat and the son of teachers, will not seek to strip public
employees of collective bargaining rights as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker
recently did.

“This state will not go down the road that Wisconsin has chosen,” Kitzhaber told a Portland City Club audience March 4.

But he will seek to
wring concessions from OEA to save a state budget that is in far worse
shape than Wisconsin’s—in fact, fifth worst in the nation, according to a
March report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Oregon’s
teachers did not cause the state’s fiscal crisis, but because so much
of their compensation comes directly from the general fund, Kitzhaber
and lawmakers will balance the budget on their backs.

There are other large public-employee unions in Oregon, but none gets as large a chunk of the state’s general fund as teachers.

Due to Oregon’s
unusual tax structure, teachers here are more closely tied to the
general fund—the pot of money over which Kitzhaber and lawmakers have
the greatest discretion—than anywhere else in the country.

Sanders also knows
that money talks, and that the OEA contributes more money to elected
officials—including Kitzhaber—than any group in Oregon.

In fact, no teachers
union in the country gives more generously. Those donations give OEA
extraordinary access to lawmakers and the governor and help them
preserve the status quo.

“OEA
would cut off at the knees any Democrat who really wanted to reform
education,” says former two-term Portland School Board member Steve
Griffith. “The effect of OEA’s bank account is to silence a discussion
about accountability that needs to be had.”

Then again, the
landscape has shifted in Salem. During his campaign, Kitzhaber told
teachers he would take their money but would not be their errand boy.

“I am not willing to
make promises I can’t keep just to get your endorsement. And I am not
willing to sugarcoat the extraordinarily difficult fiscal environment
that lies ahead of us,” Kitzhaber told the OEA convention last year.
“The fact is that we need to make some fundamental changes…some
‘reforms,’ if you will, if we hope to secure the future and the funding
on which that future rests.”

Despite that message,
the OEA still spent more than $1.1 million to get Kitzhaber elected in
the general election. That funding was about 12 percent of what it cost
him to win last November.

As a lawmaker and
two-term governor from 1995 to 2003, Kitzhaber earned a reputation for
independence, but the OEA is about as central to Democratic politics as
any group in this state.

“I don’t think
[people] understand the relationship between labor and the governor,”
says Oregon Republican Party Chairman Allen Alley. “They don’t
understand the level of donations—and that those donations can make
driving real change really difficult.”

States of the UnionREPORT CARD: Contributions to state and federal campaigns, political parties and ballot measure committees in 2007 and 2008 by teachers unions, their affiliates, employees and PACs, divided by the number of teachers in that state (in 2007). Sources: National Institute on Money in State Politics, Digest of Education statistics, 2009

Oregon’s financial problem is simple. In the words of former Gov. Ted Kulongoski, “we cannot afford the government we have.”

Here’s
the clearest representation of that shortfall: At the end of 2009,
lawmakers projected they would spend $18.3 billion in the 2011-13
biennium. Today, Kitzhaber’s budget projects the state will have only
$14.8 billion available.

There are various
explanations for the deficit. Tax receipts plummeted in the recession;
Oregonians’ median income is only about 90 percent of median income
nationwide; the state’s cumulative tax rates are low, about 40th in the
country. And the cost of government keeps rising.

Where does the money
go? State figures show that about three out of four general-fund dollars
end up in public-employee salaries and benefits.

The biggest component in the state general-fund budget is K-12 education, which accounts for 38 percent of expenditures.

“The governor and the
Legislature don’t have a lot of choice about reducing the K-12 budget,
because that’s where the money is,” says Oregon State University
political science professor Bill Lunch.

Teachers are not
overpaid, at least in salary terms (comparative data on benefits is
difficult to find). National Education Association statistics for
2008-09 pegged the average Oregon teacher’s salary at $54,320. That is
17th in the country and right at the national average.

In
February, Kitzhaber released a budget that allocates $5.56 billion to
K-12 for the next two years. That’s $1 billion less than the projected
cost of maintaining the status quo.

K-12 funding is
allocated across 197 Oregon school districts. So local school boards
will have to find $1 billion in savings through some combination of
teacher layoffs, shortening the school year and cutting compensation.

Historically, Salem
has shipped cash to local districts with little or no guidance as to how
it is spent. Kitzhaber wants to end that practice.

“The governor has
been clear about what he sees as the post-Measure 5 [the 1990 ballot
measure that shifted school funding from the local to state level]
disconnect between what is bargained for at the local level and the
actual fiscal condition of the state,” says Kitzhaber’s spokesman, Tim
Raphael. “That disconnect is one of the elements that creates
instability in school funding.”

Kitzhaber has floated
a couple of ideas so far. He’s made it clear that teachers will be
losing jobs next year. But he has said he’d be willing to agree to a
floor—say, 38 percent of the general fund to K-12—in exchange for OEA
agreeing not to ask for total compensation that increases faster than
inflation.

Kitzhaber also wants teachers to absorb more of the costs of their health care and pensions.

(About half of
teachers in Oregon contribute to their own pension, whereas the
districts pick up the the rest of the tab. Kitzhaber wants to reduce
that cost.)

If teachers go along
with his financial proposals, Kitzahaber has said he would consider
releasing $200 million in one-time money from the Education Stability
Fund, a savings account funded by Lottery dollars.

But, Kitzhaber is also pushing OEA to accept reforms, aimed at more efficient spending and better educational outcomes.

Kitzhaber’s
proposals include collapsing all state educational boards into one K-20
board, shifting the state superintendent of public instruction to an
appointed rather than elected position, consolidating some school
districts and allowing them to opt out of co-ops called Education
Service Districts, and increasing online learning.

There
is also discussion about changing the way teachers get laid off. Oregon
is one of only 15 states in which teacher layoffs must be done by
seniority, an approach critics refer to as “quality blind.”

Such a policy removes
principals’ discretion, and accelerates the increase in Oregon’s
student-teacher ratios, which in 2008 NEA figures pegged at 18.9-to-1,
the fifth highest in the country.

The
student-teacher ratio goes up faster because a beginning teacher makes
about half of a senior teacher’s pay. That means districts must lay off
twice as many younger teachers to save the same amount of money, thereby
increasing the student-teacher ratio twice as fast.

Merit-based rather
than seniority-based layoffs would be a major threat to the status
quo—as would another Kitzhaber priority: ending the practice of
allocating money without regard to performance.

“Generally,
the governor believes the state should be moving away from funding
based on enrollment and toward funding based on outcomes,” Raphael says.

Now, all Kitzhaber has to do is sell that package to OEA.

Credits: Governor John Kitzhaber’s Office

When Richard Sanders came this year to Oregon after 30 years of union organizing in the East, he took over a colossus.

“It’s an honor to lead what is widely known as one of the top two or three teachers unions in the country,” Sanders says.

Sanders is being modest.

Since Jan. 1, 2008, OEA has contributed more than $8.5 million to political campaigns.

That’s more than the
state’s other two largest public-employee unions combined and more than
six times the amount spent by the top business lobby group, Associated
Oregon Industries.

A 2009 comparison of teachers union campaign spending per member put OEA in the top spot nationally—by a substantial margin.

OEA
is in a fundamentally different position from private-sector unions such
as the United Auto Workers. The UAW, for example, does not select Ford’s chief executive or the company’s board.

But in Oregon, one of
only five states that does not limit the size of political
contributions, OEA plays an outsized role in electing the very people
who decide the K-12 budget.

Perhaps because
unions usually support Democratic candidates, the relationship between
public-employee unions and elected officials has mostly troubled
Republicans. But historically it has also been a concern for some
Democrats.

“The process of
collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted
into the public service,” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in
1937.

Roosevelt worried
that the financial interests of public employees conflicted with the
public interest, making the unions’ position untenable.

Sanders scoffs at that idea. But he acknowledges OEA is formidable.

The group says it
represents more than 48,000 members—a number higher than the populations
of all but 10 Oregon cities. (Unlike other large public-sector unions
in Oregon, such as the Service Employees International Union, OEA does
not report precise membership numbers, or officers’ compensation or
other financial details, thanks to a successful 2003 lawsuit teachers
unions filed against the federal Department of Labor. OEA was willing to
disclose Sanders’ salary—$160,000.)

“They are extremely
powerful and they are very proud of it,” says former state Sen. Rick
Metsger (D-Welches). “On a regular basis they can and will spend as much
as they need to, which makes opposing them very difficult.”

Sanders is a Stanford- and Princeton-educated scholar whose desk is covered with books such as Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System and Michael Lewis’ The Big Short, a cautionary tale about the mortgage meltdown.

“What we’re seeing is nothing less than a concerted attack on the middle class,” he says.

Sanders is also a sports junkie who keeps a teddy bear sporting a Boston Red Sox jersey on his credenza.

But
while the athletic contests he loves are all about competition, ranking
and sorting, he has no time for such concepts when it comes to his
members.

When the subject
turns to looming teacher layoffs, Sanders defends the seniority-based
system of last hired, first fired with a rapid-fire argument worthy of a
high-priced trial lawyer.

Sanders bristles at
the notion principals should be allowed to assess teachers in the
absence of a teacher-designed evaluation methodology.

“Quality is very
subjective,” he says. “There is no fair way in the current system for
principals or a district to decide which teachers are better than
others.”

RICHARD SANDERS: The OEA head says financial speculators and tax policies favoring the rich are the real problem. “People are lashing out at a false enemy—public-employee unions,” he says.

Credits: vivianjohnson.com

OEA is also hostile
to another form of competition—charter schools. Sanders says they are
ineffective and a thinly disguised effort to destroy public education
and undermine unions.

“I’m not sure the
corporate class as a whole wants an educated society,” Sanders says.
“They are looking for a foot in the door to overthrow democracy.”

Sanders says he’s
aware OEA has a reputation for being “the party of no” in Salem, and
pledges to be more open to change. That transformation is happening
slowly.

On March 14, for
instance, OEA called in chits from two House Republicans to kill a
high-profile bill that would have lengthened from three years to five
years the initial contract term for a charter.

The defeat incensed
House Education Committee Co-Chairman Matt Wingard (R-Wilsonville), the
bill’s sponsor, in part because OEA lobbyists had sat silently through a
committee hearing on the bill, never publicly announcing their
position.

“They [OEA] didn’t
say anything,” Wingard said on the House floor. “We didn’t hear from the
opposition, so I was left to conclude there was no opposition.”

That is OEA’s style.
When the SEIU opposes legislation, its members storm the Capitol in
purple T-shirts and its lobbyists raise hell. The American Federation of
State, County, and Municipal Employees sends in an army in green
T-shirts and also states its positions publicly.

OEA
is stealthier. Dressed in business attire, staff lobbyists for OEA and
its allies gather in a pack at the rear of committee hearing rooms. They
save their opposition for closed-door meetings.

“I call them the ‘panel of no,’” Wingard says of the OEA-led public education lobby.

OEA can be tough on Democrats as well.

In the February 2010
special legislative session, Rep. Ben Cannon (D-Portland) introduced a
modest school-reform bill. OEA did not like the bill, which died
quietly.

When the union made its 2010 election picks, Cannon was the only incumbent Portland lawmaker not to get OEA’s endorsement.

“I
was disappointed,” Cannon says. “I have been one of the most outspoken
advocates for increasing the level of investment in education. My wife
is an OEA member and I am a teacher myself.”

If Kitzhaber had to face down Richard Sanders alone, he’d probably be outgunned.

But
the 30-30 party split in the House gives Kitzhaber some unlikely GOP
allies: Wingard, who works for an online charter school when not
legislating, and Rep. Dennis Richardson (R-Central Point), co-chairman
of the budget-writing Joint Ways and Means Committee who makes Wisconsin
Gov. Scott Walker look like a moderate.

In the Senate, Education Committee Chairman Mark Hass (D-Raleigh Hills) is mostly in lockstep with Kitzhaber.

And
unlike in previous legislative sessions, the union faces an organized
coalition of advocacy groups also aligned with Kitzhaber.

Those groups, which
represent thousands of parents, many of the state’s largest employers,
and influential foundations, can help Kitzhaber bring pressure to bear
on OEA.

There’s perhaps no
better example of the new face of K-12 advocacy in Salem than Sue Levin,
executive director of Stand for Children. Elfin, with a mop of black
curly hair, the 47-year-old Levin hardly looks like a threat to the
country’s strongest teacher’s union.

A co-founder of the women’s clothing company Lucy Activewear and adviser to startups, Levin brings a tough, bottom-line focus.

She’s good at what
unions excel at—organizing. Last year, Levin sat down with
representatives from the Oregon Business Association, several
big-district superintendents and the Chalkboard Project.

The groups agreed on a
common, one-page agenda, which dovetails with Kitzhaber’s and is aimed
at improving schools rather than just asking for more money.

“Stand
[for Children] believes Oregon schools should be well funded and high
functioning,” Levin says. “Well funded does not guarantee high
functioning.”

Part of what galvanized advocates was Oregon’s showing in the federal “Race to the Top” process in 2010.

The Obama
administration dangled billions of dollars for states that could
demonstrate they were aggressively pursuing effective new approaches.
Oregon placed 33rd out of 40 states that applied for the money.

“Oregon is at the
bottom in terms of having progressive conversations on how to move the
bar on student achievement,” Hildick says. “Race to the Top exposed
that. In the past, we have focused so much on the number, it has been
hard to move the debate beyond that.”

The upshot is this:
When Kitzhaber sits down with Sanders and OEA to talk money, the weight
of groups that used to simply push for more dollars will be with
Kitzhaber, not OEA. That’s a big difference.

“In the past, the
debate usually started and pretty much ended with ‘the [K-12 fund]
number,’” says OBA president Ryan Deckert, a Democratic former state
senator. “Now we’re talking about governance and achievement and how to
spend what we have more efficiently.”

Kitzhaber and Sanders have met a few times so far, without coming to any resolution.

KITZHABER: “I have been clear from Day 1 that changing the funding and governance systems for public education in Oregon is a heavy lift.”

Credits: leahnash.com

Sanders says his
members are listening and open to change, but “want some hope” from
Kitzhaber. That could take the form of promises to seek future new taxes
on the rich, to reform the “kicker” law, or to reduce the number and
value of tax breaks corporations get.

“Our members have
made sacrifices,” Sanders says. “If people focus on the wrong problem
and want to make the union the enemy, that’s really hard.”

Given OEA’s power and Kitzhaber’s tendency to get frustrated, it’s worth looking for clues as to how serious he is. Two of the personnel choices he’s made so far show education insiders he’s taking an independent approach.

First, he selected
former Portland School Board member and two-time GOP gubernatorial
candidate Ron Saxton to lead his K-12 “budget work team.” Now an executive at Jeld-Wen, the Klamath Falls housing-products manufacturer, Saxton is no union sympathizer.

That’s a big shift.
Kitzhaber’s Democratic predecessor, Gov. Ted Kulongoski, named OEA
president James Sager his education adviser and later made OEA lobbyist
Chip Terhune his chief of staff. Kitzhaber has said he is willing to
“burn all his political capital in six months.”

“I have been clear
from Day 1 that changing the funding and governance systems for public
education in Oregon is a heavy lift,” Kitzhaber told WW.

“I have discussed the
need for change and specific proposals with a wide range of
stakeholders, including school districts, teachers, parents, legislators
and the OEA,” he said. “Although we don’t always agree, their input is
critical to ensuring we design a workable system that delivers better
results.”

Advocates are eager for him to strap on his weight belt and start lifting today.

“I think what he does
in the next six months will tell the tale of his entire term,”
Chalkboard’s Hildick says. “The governor needs to use his political
capital now.”

"In the low usage areas, we found that our vehicles sit idle four times longer, ultimately affecting overall vehicle availability for the Portland membership base, as well as parking for the Portland community."

News
East Portland can't catch a break.Just this week KGW had a story called, "Diverse, non-cool East Por... More